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Mitt Romney is the John Kerry of The GOP

To all but the most devout longshot bettors and the impossibly deluded Mitt Romney’s huge victory in Florida would seem to confirm the GOP’s deep suspicion that he is already their presidential nominee. John Dickerson of Slate calls it: “inevitability restored.”

Unfortunately for the former Massachusetts governor, inevitability isn’t exactly the most exciting thing in the world, and the most he can expect to get from his party and his base seems to be a collective: “fine.”

We’ve seen this before. I remember the last time that we had deeply divisive incumbent president with some serious albatrosses hanging around his neck. But when the time seemed right for a bold Democrat to solidify the simmering discontent around George W. Bush’s presidency, the best we could come up with was a sort of boring guy from Massachusetts: John Kerry.

It wasn’t that John Kerry was a bad guy, it was just that he was profoundly boring. He was everything Democrats were seen as through the eyes of the Republican opposition: an effete, Ivy League flip-flopper who could debate with a silver tongue but had no backbone. And yet, he didn’t seem to have any of the positive qualities that could’ve motivated Democrats: no charisma, no apparent populism. He became a punching bag for Republicans, but Democrats couldn’t be galvanized to care enough to stand up to them. Imagine “rocking the vote” for a guy like John Kerry.

Romney may be more charismatic and quite a bit better looking than Kerry, but he suffers from a lot of the same problems. He’s not offensive, he’s just not exciting. And like Kerry, Romney is the spitting image of Republicans in the eyes of his opposition: a slick, corporate raider who seeks to solidify Wall Street‘s stranglehold on the average American. It isn’t quite what he meant, but he literally said: “I’m not very concerned about the poor.”

And yet he lacks those qualities that could galvanize Republicans to stand up for him. He’s a mile away from Tea Party populists that gave the Republicans their recent Congressional surge, and while he may be a devout, faithful Christian, he’s the wrong sort of devout faithful Christian. Those are two bases that won’t be voting for Obama anytime soon, but also won’t be able to muster the kind of full-fledged support Romney is going to need.

That’s why Romney is in for a long, painful campaign all the way to the primary as he continues to try and convince people that he’s the presidential candidate. It means that he’s going to be running two campaigns at once: one against Obama, and one against Gingrich. But the guy that might have a shot at Obama happens to be the same guy that might be vulnerable to Gingrich.

The parade of lunatics that culminated in Newt Gingrich supervillainesque bid to take Romney down only served to reinforce the idea the Republicans were desperate for anyone, anyone to take their nomination. Romney, the capable, presidential businessman and politician was there all along, but there was a time when the fronrunners included a lecherous pizza mogul and a guy who couldn’t remember his own policies. Romney is the eager kid in class that the teacher doesn’t want to call on. But he’s the only one with an answer.

The primary process has shown that Romney can be a tough fighter — tougher than Kerry ever was. He’s got money, he’s got negative ads, and he knows how to use them. But he’s not going to be able to become president on his own. Come November, no doubt, there will be a lot of people voting against Obama. But Romney is going to need some people voting for him if he expects to be President of The United States of America.

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